Play Pokemon Online
The people in charge of making Pokemon popular again have done a great job. Pokemon was big a few years ago and it's recently made an amazing comeback. A whole new generation of kids are trying to catch them all.
It's a very good time to be a Pokemon fan. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl for the Nintendo DS have been in the Top 10 best selling games for months now and the Diamond and Pearl cartoon is pretty popular too. But why stop there? I have a vision and Pokemon people feel free to borrow this idea from me, that would make Pokemon an even more dominant gaming franchise. I'd like to see a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) based on the world of Pokemon.
Sure, I know that's there's a few Pokemon games online like Pokemon Crater and Pokemon Online (POL) but those games are pretty simple and based on the game play of the Game Boy Advance version of Pokemon. And I don't even think that Nintendo has anything to do with them. They could be one cease and desist letter away from being shut down.
I'd like to see a World of Warcraft style Pokemon game online. Use the same story line and game play as Diamond and Pearl but put the players in a cartoonish 3D environment. Choose your trainer avatar and start your adventure. Think about how cool it would be to wander around different towns and cities, catch wild Pokemon, train them, battle other trainers, do gym battles, collect badges and enter tournaments and do it all in a online 3D environment that you share with other Pokemon trainers. And to make it interesting they could add some members of Team Rocket to mix. Jessie and James could be bots that come along and try to steal your Pokemon.
This would be a great game for the Wii's Online Service. Pokemon Battle Revolution is out and it already has online play in Japan but that game is just an extension of Diamond and Pearl. Without a DS, that game isn't too good. No, they need to start over with a whole new online Pokemon game.
The Nintendo Wii is the hottest selling new video game console right now and it's outselling the PS3 and XBox 360. The Wii is still hard to find in the stores and that isn't going to change anytime soon. The Wii's only weakness seems to be it's online play which is weak at best. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is going to have online play but it's release has been pushed back to February. My Worlds of Warcraft Pokemon game idea (let's call it Worlds of Pokemon for this article) if done right, could become the game that puts the Wii Online Service on the map.
Hopefully someone at Nintendo has already come up with this idea and programmers are already hard at work on Worlds of Pokemon. If not, then I hope they have enough free time to read this article and get inspired.
When Anthony Tripp isn't teaching his son how to catch them all, he's coming up with ideas about how to play Pokemon online and writing about it on his blog, http://www.pokemontoday.com
AP - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will campaign for the first time alongside former President Bill Clinton at a rally next week in Orlando, Fla.
